Apologies that I wasn’t super-clear on that. @Pleonast and @LSLGuy have provided clarification. Americans tend to switch back and forth between the knife and the fork in the dominant hand, and only use the non-dominant hand to hold the fork while cutting with the dominant hand.
I was hoping someone could demonstrate a chopstick style method using a knife and fork one handed, that would be badass! 
I seem to remember a long, contentious thread about this subject many years ago. Myself, primarily a lefty, I hold my fork in my left hand and knife in right. No switching. I can’t imagine doing a fork - knife swap with every single cut and bite of food.
I wouldn’t say they hated lefties, but they would have been more than happy to tie my left hand behind my back and give me bread and water until I turned righty.
Fortunately, my father was a lefty made to turn righty, and he not only came out of the experience with bad penmanship, but no particular coordination with either hand, and a stutter that popped up when he was under stress. Using that as a baseline my parents threatened to pull me out of school if anyone so much as suggested I should be taught to write with my right hand.
None of the above. I am bidexterous, in that I can only do some things only with my right hand, some things only with my left hand and it pretty much balances out. This is not advantageous sometimes, because in Little League I threw with my left hand…but I also caught with my left hand, so you can guess where my career in baseball went.
Good for them. My Mom was Team Nun.
OK, follow-on question:
Are any of your immediate family lefties? Do you think you inherited it? (I’m the only lefty I know of in my family, but the sample size is small.)
Now that is really cool! Have you researched it at all?
Not really, sorry.
Left-hander here. My grandmother suggested I try to write with the right hand, but never pressed the issue.
In school, I picked up the recorder with my top hand “wrong”, I.E., using my right hand on top. I think it was just instinctive as I don’t recall thinking about it. So when, a decade later, I took up the bagpipes, I started playing the practice chanter (mouth-blown practice pipe) the same way. So when I actually got the bagpipes, I had to get a bag that goes under the right shoulder – bagpipes are tied into the bag asymetrically.
You could edit the title to read “…and Righties” to get better stats, if it matters to you.
Yeah, I somehow think this poll is just a bit self-selecting with about a quarter of Dopers reporting as almost exclusively left-handed, and another 13% ambidextrous, primarily left handed. Or only 68% reporting as exclusively or primarily right-handed. I’m right-handed completely, but one of my two kids is left-handed.
Here’s Mr. Boffo’s take on it.
I’m a natural lefty, but for cultural reasons was required to do some things right handed. Specifically, those things over which my mom had greater control. Hence, I write and use a fork with my right hand. Since my father was also a converted lefty, however, he allowed me to use whichever hand I wanted for sports, so I throw with my left. I’m also naturally left footed, but playing soccer made my right foot probably at least 75% as good as my left, at least when I was playing regularly.
There’s one thing that has always struck me as odd, though. At the table, I cut with my left, keeping the fork in my right hand all the time. When I cook - and I cook a lot - I cut right-handed.
I have tried eating left-handed just for grins and giggles, and I can do it with chopsticks pretty well (grew up using chopsticks), but with fork and spoon? It’s harder. I can’t understand that, either.
I’m very dominantly right-handed, but, oddly enough, chopsticks is one thing I can do both left- and right-handed. Not as well left-handed, but good enough to get through a meal if I wanted to. I can’t use a knife and fork reversed, though. I mean, I kinda can, but it’s very awkward cutting with my left hand in a way chopsticks isn’t.
Same, and also, my right eye is dominant.
But I’m largely ambidextrous, and can do most things the other way when pressed. I broke my left wrist in highschool, and managed to write right handed for a few weeks while it healed.
I think that’s pretty uncommon. I hold my fork in the right hand and my knife in my left, because that’s how the table is set. And they stay that way.
I know a lot of right handed Americans do the fork swap thing, but i don’t think I’ve ever seen a lefty do it.
Either you set your table differently from most of us or there’s a left/right confusion here. Wouldn’t be the first one in this thread 
I suspect I’ve seen it in teh wild, but now that you mention it, I was mostly making an assumption about lefties’ swapping since ultimately it’s 100% about etiquette and zero percent about practicality.
On a larger level …
I also suspect swapping per bite is an etiquette thing that is rapidly dying out. Individuals might still do it because that’s how they learned and now it’s just habit. But I doubt too many modern kids are having “Swapping is the only proper way to eat” drummed into them.
I’m ambisinistrous.
I’d imagine that it’s now less etiquette, and more just simple learning and modeling after how their parents eat – and most American parents are likely still eating that way, because it’s how they’ve done it for their whole lives.
I’m still here.
Oh, erm sorry read the title wrong.
Left-IES. Gotcha
I’m lefty. First grade teacher says no. Daddy told her unequivocally that “yes” I would be lefty.
I did learn to print tiny and do some sketches right handed in Art school.
I do my crossword puzzles right handed because of that tiny printing. Works for me.
I am very right-handed although, for who knows what reason, I can only snap my fingers with my left hand.
Years ago when I played a fair bit of tennis I used to have a weekly lesson. It was almost more fun than playing. We would work on some aspect of my game and then play points, without scoring, to finish the lesson. My coach, who played low level tournaments, went easy on me because he was far, far better than me. One week he rang me to tell me that there would be no lesson, he had injured himself in a weekend tournament. He would let me know when we could resume. A couple of weeks later we did. It wasn’t until we were rallying that , noticing that the angles all seemed different, I realized that he was playing left-handed. I asked him how long he had been able to play left-handed and he explained that he had learned since his injury - “Can’t play lefty can’t earn anything.” So in 2 weeks he became a left-handed player and was still far, far better than me.
Some time later I read about a college pitcher who, upon signing an MLB contract, was told that he would have to quit the college tennis team to protect his elbow. He, likewise, converted himself to a lefty and was able to keep his spot on the team.